


Life After Death

by V_M_nanowriter



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-05-14
Updated: 2012-05-22
Packaged: 2017-11-05 08:40:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 5,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/404454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/V_M_nanowriter/pseuds/V_M_nanowriter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Each of them died that night, each had half of himself killed for the sake of a revolution. Somehow, the Wolfbats must go on living.  [Tahno-centric series of shorts]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prelude: The Games Gods Play

The following is the recipe of sadistic gods—

> Take:
> 
> \- Three young men (all with special abilities and similar goals; aged to maturity)  
>  \- Place ingredients in a townhouse paid for by sponsors and winnings from using special abilities. Simmer with equal parts pride, entitlement, lust, and achievement with a healthy dash of hard work until bubbling with corruption.  
>  \- Remove: special abilities (Best results: violent, theatrical manner, should have an aftertaste of humiliation and impotence.)
> 
> \- Place back into townhouse to chill until ready to serve. As dish is cooling, observe stages of grief (Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance). Depending on ingredients, stages might mingle, though Acceptance should be preceded by some sort of Upward Turn to signify readiness of the dish.
> 
> Desired result: Three young men purged of corruption, with valuable life experiences, and with well-rounded character brought about by trials.  
>  \- If dish has been improperly prepared, one or more of the young men will never reach Acceptance, and the recipe is ruined.

 

Han Xin Ye, a spirit of wealth and gambling laughed to himself. “I’ll take your bet,” once he saw the three proposed men. The Monkey to his right cackled and hooted, shaking his staff.

The Moon smiled to herself, and her partner Ocean held her hand. “I believe in him,” she said calmly. “Yama? Would you be so kind as to facilitate our wager?”

Yama snorted as he was denied a death—he was denied many deaths in this maniac’s call for a bloodless war in his fight for equality among humans—and was forced to accept a half death, the death of human’s bending.

Futushi, a god of storms laughed with the monkey as Yama handed him a jade skull for blessing to act in the storm Futushi was brewing.

The Ocean did not speak with words, always with atmosphere and signs.

Yue agreed. “Izanami will judge the fairness of this bargain,” she declared. It was only appropriate for a goddess who watched over life and death to determine a contest based on the question of rebirth after a cruel crime. The goddess appeared in white vestments and nodded silently.

Tu-Di Gong arrived punctually, as always, to notorize an official wager among spirits and gods in the name of the emperor, and placed a burning contract in each spirit’s hands before hurrying off to other administrative duties.

And so, in that way gods have of messing with humanity while not understanding the human cost of it all, they agreed to play a game that the Wolfbats would never have been capable of training for and Amon carefully planned his attack on the Pro-Bending Championship.


	2. Stage 1: Denial

The stages did not strike each of the young men at the same time or in the same way.

For Shaozu, denial was disbelief. He stood in the kitchen for eight hours a day, trying to light things on fire. The first day, that was a hazard since he turned on the gas burner and left it on as he tried to light it and Ming almost set the house ablaze lighting a clove cigarillo outside.

Tahno would have been the one to tell him to turn the burner off, but he was in the upstairs bathroom soaking in the bathtub most of the day. The water had started out nearly scalding because the pain confirmed to him that he was indeed alive. Then, as the hours went on, the water cooled and cooled while his blood temperature remained feverishly high, and in a slight delirium he tried to freeze the water around him for a period of time longer than he could keep track of. Eventually, the delirium waned and he tried in earnest to do the smallest tricks—a whirlpool beneath his hand, a stream rising to circle his wrist. For a brief moment he thought he actually had something when he began to see waves in the water, and then the crushing realization came that the water was moving because his torso was moving. He grappled with the plug in the drain with softened fingernails and the newfound inability to yank the plug out with the bath water itself. Once he finally wrenched it out, he didn’t wait until the water was gone before turning the shower tap on high power and heat. He hoped it would feel as though it were washing away the shame and fear and impotence, but it only felt like it was cleansing him of his own grime and the chill of a bath long gone cold.

Ming didn’t deal with it. He went to the rock garden in the townhouse’s courtyard, unrolled five of his clove cigarillos and rerolled them with some barely-legal grass and sat on the open-air Fire Nation style covered porch and smoked to forget. After the first two, he got up sluggishly with a dopey smile and walked into the courtyard, flicking the cigarillo butts into Shaozu’s barbeque brazier, and sat down next to Tahno’s ornamental koi pond. He rolled up his pants and lowered his legs into the koi pond and smoked two more clove and weed cigarillos while the koi tried to swallow his toes for the next hour. He left the butts in the koi pond, and the fish tasted them and rejected them, leaving the remaining paper and herbs to decay at the bottom of the pond. Ming smoked his final custom cigarillo while he was splayed out on his back in the middle of his rock garden, baking in the sun.

Ming eventually had to get up because he was very, very, **_very_** hungry and went into a house that reeked of natural gas with Shaozu in the kitchen pitifully pointing at a candle again and again, no long expecting fire to come, but hoping on a gamble it would light.

The day before last, in preparation for expected celebration that night, they had already ordered in their favorite foods and had them waiting in the ice box to eat on their respective morning-afters. There had been no raucus nights of celebration, there had been no morning-afters, there had only been day-and-a-half long comas and slowly dawning realization. And now Ming was plowing through as much of the cold food as he could while sitting on the floor of the kitchen. He’d gotten through all of his food, had a few twirled lumps of Tahno’s noodles, and started on one of the omlette-wrapped noodle sandwiches that Shaozu liked so much before it occurred to him to look at Shaozu at the kitchen table.

As he sat on the floor eating as much as he could, Ming's lighter had fallen out of his pocket. It was a nice lighter, very expensive—body made of polished river stone, inlaid with a gold medallion reading “good fortune,” the hinge of the top and the lip of the cut made into the stone made of gold-plated steel, and the lighting mechanism lifted out to be refilled at his ease. When Ming turned red, bleary eyes on Shaozu, he was flipping the lighter open and closed, open and closed again.

 

Up in the heavens, each time he did, a certain god of gambling flipped his truest coin to see if there would be a spark as the steel lip struck itself. Tails. Tails. Tails. Tails. Tails. Tails. Tails. Defiantly, luck seemed to be saying the boys would live.

 

Something primal struck in Ming's mind, and he lurched to his feet with one thought in mind: Tahno. Tahno would know what to do. Tahno was always the idea man—Tahno would know what was wrong.

Tahno was upstairs in his room, wearing what one previous girlfriend had called The Purple Robe of Sex and half drunk on a third of a bottle of celebratory plum wine. He hadn’t quite closed his door, and Ming burst through, absently hesitating when he realized Tahno was barely covered.

“What the hell do you want?” Tahno snapped, dropping the hand holding the bottle to the side of the chair so he wouldn’t look like he was drinking alone in a dark room wearing the last gift he’d received from the last girl he’d actually had more than two feelings for.

“Um…” Ming began. “Shaozu… kitchen… lighter…” Something, something in there was vitally important, important enough to run up two flights of stairs for Tahno. Something… something very big and important.

“Why the hell does the house smell like gas?” Tahno asked, and then jolted to his feet as the last words clicked. He rushed past Ming, who stood for a moment to bask in his achievement of doing something big and important while Tahno rushed to save their lives.

Tahno swung around the post at the end of the banister and his arm moved on its own to throw a hard and fast burst of water at Shaozu, his thumb just on the ignition switch of the lighter. In that instant as the flash of blue whished past his face, taking out his hand and the lighter, Shaozu and Tahno both truly believed he had waterbended.

Then the blue glass bottle smashed into the lighter against the kitchen wall, and they both sunk.

_Not waterbending… my bottle of wine…_ Tahno thought. Then he shook his head and got the hair out of his eye, adding **_Close e-spirits-damned-nough._**

“You done here? And turn off that damn stove before you kill us all.” And Tahno turned and walked away so he wouldn’t have to see the mix of hatred and despair in Shaozu’s eyes. 


	3. Change of Stage

After that first day, things got loud in the house of the Wolfbats. Tahno screamed at everyone for the slightest provocation and almost always had some form of wine within reach. Shaozu had always had a short fuze, but didn’t burn long outside of the arena. And Ming had bigger problems to deal with: his sister, and by extension his sister and his teammates.

Ming’s sister Tenna was his fraternal twin. Their family resemblance only split on the matter that she was two inches taller than her brother who was just grazing 5’11’’ himself and her iron gray eyes.

She showed up on the fourth day, and Tahno yelled from the living room for someone to get the door. He was busy scanning the paper for news about Amon, the Republic Bending Commission (which had yet to send the championship pot or credit it to his bank), or the Avatar. When the knocking at the front door continued, Tahno tossed the paper into the fire and went to answer it. The service staff had quit when Shaozu had moved from Denial to Anger.

“What do you want?” Tahno said, leaning against the door frame and then realizing he had to look up to the woman on the stoop.

“I’m Tenna Todou, Ming’s sister. We’ve met. Where’s my brother?”

She was matter-of-fact and offered not the slightest pity or “I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Probably has his feet in the koi pond,” Tahno answered without stepping aside to let her in the house.

“…What?” she asked, readjusting the snowcape about the shoulders of her leather duster.

“He probably hasn’t been able to feel his feet for a few days. I think he’s been sleeping on the couch. Smells like his smokes.” Tahno didn’t feel like telling her that the koi pond was heated from the house’s furnace in the winter. That her brother wasn’t suffering from hypothermia would be good news, and good news was something he felt like keeping to himself more and more these days.

She toed the door open, which was to say that she was not so indelicate as to kick the door open, but Tahno was not stupid enough to put any resistance behind it. Tenna  walked past him straight to the rear of the house where the sliding doors to the courtyard were.

Tahno didn’t feel like getting involved. He didn’t feel like getting involved in anything recently. Even so, it was the only thing happening in the house recently since Shaozu was out and Tahno had already burned his newspaper. He went to the sliding door and leaned against the frame to watch Tenna walk away from her brother to the rainwater barrel, which was full from a recent sleet. She broke the layer of ice on the surface with the bucket by the water barrel and then filled the bucket with freezing water. She then walked back to her brother and began to pour it on him starting from the knees going to his head. He woke up from his stupor as the cold water hit him, and was still sputtering into consciousness as his sister emptied the rest of the bucket onto his face. In Ming's sputtering, Tahno was pretty sure he heard “sis” and possibly “glad to see you.”

“Get up. I’m here and you haven’t offered me anything to eat or drink.” She stepped aside and allowed her dripping brother to shake himself off. In his legs, Tahno could still see the reflexive stance of an earthbender.

“Yeah, I’m real hungry…” he blearily agreed.

“I bet you are with how much grass you’ve been smoking,” Tenna muttered.

Tahno didn’t stand to the side as they walked past him, but he did close the door after them. For all that he didn’t want to be involved, he did feel like joining them in the kitchen, and he blamed the fact that he hadn’t eaten all day.

“So, is this how you plan on dealing with things, Ming? Just going to lie around smoking all day, trying to act like nothing’s wrong? I thought the reason we came to the city was that we didn’t want to be like Dad.”

“Don’t say I’m like Dad,” Ming mumbled as he placed a pot of water on the stove and turned the gas on. His lighter had survived the impact with the wine bottle the other day, though now the gold medallion on the side was scuffed pretty badly. He didn’t look at it as he lit the stove.

“Okay then. What happens when getting mellow on the grass isn’t enough? Goodness knows your team is in the gossip rags enough to know you’re familiar with the red light district, and the opium dens are the next step on the way, aren’t they?”

“Cut it out, Tenna,” Ming said, watching the pot of water.

“Well, whenever you wanted to escape something before, you always went to your bending. I know that’s how you got so good, Mr. Four Time Champ. Oh, but now you don’t _have_ that, so whatever will my little big brother do? Looks like you’ve chosen drugs, and since you need to be the best at everything, you’ll just keep going until you’re the best at that, won’t you?”

“Shut up, Tenna!” Ming shouted, turning around.

“Oh, except being the best at substance abuse means _nobody wins_ , doesn’t it?” Tenna continued, a maniacal glee on her face, and Tahno read it as acting. “But what do I know? I’m only a city-employed social worker! But know this, Ming—you’ll never be as good at smoking as Daddy was at drinking.”

“ _Shut up Tenna!_ ” Ming yelled, and flung the pot of water at her. Tenna raised her arms in time to block—Tahno recognized her brother’s reflexes.

“What’s that, Daddy? You’ll yell and throw things if I try to talk to you about your problem?” It was at point when Tahno discretely turned the corner and left the kitchen.

“Oh, spirits—Tenna! Tenna, did the water burn you?” Tahno could hear Ming crying, and in that moment when Tenna’s voice dropped from her hysterical goading, Tahno calculated where and when they two learned their reflexes.

It didn’t need saying when Ming came to Tahno’s room later to say that he was moving to his sister’s apartment to “work through this whole thing where I belong, with family.”

 

 

In the heavens, spirits mocked and questioned. An Earthbender returning to the earth and herbal remedies to remain in denial about the unnatural crime committed against him. A firebender to mired in his anger that his denial didn’t last. And Yue smiled on her chosen waterbender, moving in his own way through grief.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Nope, it’s actually not enough that the show has to frak Tahno over and turn him into a tragic character and all that. Nope! Nope, I’m just going to be a tearjerking dick and say that the earthbender was a victim of absent mother, drunk father, and child abuse. Dick move, there, writer, dick move.  
> Also, I have created a tumblr specifically for fan fiction related things including writing processes, fandoms, and fan communication etc. If you wish, the information in on my profile.  
> (Abusive jackass to the characters and a self promotion plug? And I’m following this up with a comedic chapter? Was today a good day or something?)


	4. Stage 2: Anger

Megumi Sato (no, not that Sato) made her life being other people’s bitch.

Mother works two jobs, father is gone 90% of the time on ships? Little Miss Megumi, care of house! Varying degrees, ages 7 to 17. Want to be popular in school? Megumi, do our homework for us! (She’d wrangled a “study group” out of that one, and sure she was the one solving all the math problems and looking in the textbook for historical facts, but at least they were writing their own answers.) Ages 9 to 14. Fall in love with the popular boy from the school’s bending team? Sure I can tutor you in… everything… to be your secret girlfriend because I know that Azuzu from the girls’ firebending team would kill me if we were open about it. Age 15. Want to get into Republic University? Sure, I’ll grade your papers and do your paperwork for a recommendation letter, sir! Ages 16 to 17. Need scholarships? Sure, I’ll be happy to write a dozen essays, fill out two reams worth of paperwork, and bribe the post office man to make sure it’s all delivered on time! Age 17. Need money during college? Sure I understand that this restaurant is a family business, and it would be morally wrong to give me full minimum wage when your own daughters barely get that. Ages 17 to 20. Need to be member of a certain exclusive student literary society in order to get into the career I want once I graduate? Sure I’ll be willing to do your laundry, cook for you, and occasionally wear “inspiring” costumes so I can be a writer—anything for my art! Ages 17 to Twentieth Birthday: The Night Which Did Not Happen*.

And now. Why, you want to be a published writer, with your stories of women’s strength, stories of the diversity of womanhood, the value of women in all forms of love and have some female protagonists who dare not to fall in love during the course of the novel? _Sure_ , sure thing, sugarbits. Just do whatever office work gets tossed your way, you just keep working on those manuscripts until we say they’re _just right_ , and sometimes we’ll have to give you special assignments, and every special assignment is one step closer to publishing and moving forward! You up to that, sweet thing?

“Sure thing, boss!” Megumi Sato (no, not that Sato, not even a distant relative) said to herself as she scanned the map of the Upper East Side again for the directions to the Wolfbats’ shared townhouse. “Sure, I’ll walk into the mouth of hell to ask some crippled pro athletes to pose for the stupid covers of your _stupid_ penny-dreadfuls. _I_ could write a penny dreadful. I could write a _damn good_ penny dreadful, put it in your inbox under an assumed name, filled with simpering women and ridiculous men, _oh and you’d publish it_ , and who would be laughing then? **I’d be laughing then!** ”

She didn’t realize her voice was climbing in volume until she shouted that last bit and upper-middle class wives out shopping with friends, men with businesslike hats and briefcases, and little heirs with their nannies began staring at her on the street.

“But I’ve got too much self-respect to do that, of course,” she muttered to herself, dropping her warm brown eyes (not blue, not even amber, or Miss Asami Sato’s bright blinding green, accentuated by that perfect shade of purple eyeshadow which caught the attention of literally every male on that university campus) back to the map again.

Underneath the map was a news article she was trying not to read and trying even harder not to believe which talked about how the Wolfbats had been taking their de-bending-i-zation from Amon, which reportedly written based on information from several former domestic servants of the team, and it wasn’t so much grim as it was loud and chaotic and very scary.

And considering some of the gossipier things Megumi had read about their leader Tahno, she felt like like it actually be more frightening if they treated her _nice_. She compulsively tried to button the already fastened top of her high-necked blouse, and wondered if her red skirt was a bit too… daring.

There was the townhouse, with custom carvings of wolfbats on either side of the stoop. Megumi Sato (really, not _that_ Sato, I don’t even look a thing like her) mounted the steps and forced herself to knock on the door with confidence.

After about ten knocks she heard a familiar smarmy voice shout in anger “ _Who the hell is at the door? Shaozu, go get it!_ ” She hoped there wasn’t color in her cheeks. She hoped he wouldn’t be able to tell—“ _Because I damn well said to, that’s why! …FINE! For the love of god damn moonlight, Ming, you get the damn door. Where the hell even are you? DAMN IT!_ ”—that she _occasionally_ read romance novels*and _occasionally_ ** read it with the sound of his radio-perfect voice for the hero***.

Since he was no longer shouting, it was hard to hear what he said as he came to the door, but it sounded like it was about the lack of maids in the house.

“All right, what do you want?” Tahno said, opening the door and glaring out then down at Megumi Sato.

She couldn’t help the blush rising in her cheeks as she stumbled for words, and Tahno leaned against the doorframe, a gesture which would be oh-so-flirtatious in so many things she may or may not have read. Staring into those eyes, those perfect soulful eyes so full of depth that a girl with hundreds of stories left to write, Megumi ungracefully blurted out the gist of the publisher’s modeling deal and how he could be the face of hundreds of romance novel heroes and villains, not that he wasn’t already to plenty of girls with taste why was she yammering on like this, this didn’t usually happen, he wouldn’t happen to have a glass of water standing by, would he?

“Get the fuck off of our stoop,” he said before slamming the door in her face, catching the publisher’s card as Megumi’s fingers barely escaped.

She held her trembling fingers to her mouth and whispered “I almost said… ‘because you’re a waterbender…’ Oh, thank all of the spirits the conversation ended before that!” She blew out the breath she had greedily taken in after her babbling was cut off by the slamming door and rested her forehead on the front door. She turned to the side and almost tried to pull the card out of the door jam, but decided it was best to leave well enough alone and leave the house of the Wolfbats.

 

* It did happen, and it was equal parts horrible and fantastic.

**Read: religiously read romance novels

*** Read: always

**** Read: read the entire novel with his voice in mind, and might have recorded a radio interview or two he had done to keep the sound of that voice fresh, and always pictured his face and hair for the villains she thought the heroine just might just be better off with.


	5. Change of Stage

Things took a turn when Shaozu said he’d be moving back to White Falls.

“My folks want me home. They’ve got this idea that getting back to the resort will help me get better,” he said after Ming finished moving out to stay at his sister’s place.

Tahno couldn’t argue. It wasn’t like any of them had been good—or helpful, or remotely healing—company to one another. He just stayed in his chair with his feet on the ottoman, scanning the paper for news of Amon. He’d moved up from one newspaper to five, and this paper had a definite Equalist slant to its writing.

“You can come with me, you know. It’s not like my folks hate you or anything.” Anymore. There had been a period where the owners of the White Falls Resort were a bit steamed that their precious firebending boy _wasn’t_ going to be the captain of the White Falls Wolfbats. They’d even made a pilgrimage to Republic City to see their boy training in the gym with his young teammates, and after seeing Tahno win in sparring ten times in a row, they conceded that Tahno might be a better team captain.

“No,” Tahno said, without looking away from a story in the Equalist paper about Lightning Bolt Zolt, which had to be absolute bull.

“Come on. We’ve been talking about going for a vacation after the championship—why don’t we go ahead and take it?”

“No,” Tahno said. He wasn’t even reading the paper anymore.

“Tahno. I need to go home, but I don’t want to leave you alone here—”

“Shout at one door-to-door salesgirl, and suddenly everyone thinks I’m a bad guy…”

“Tahno. None of us need to be alone right now. Not dealing with this.”

“I’m not leaving, and I’m not asking you to stay. Go home, get a manicure, get better,” Tahno said, still staring without reading at the paper.

“We’ve got some beautiful girls up in White Falls, and my dad only hires the best for the resort.” That last was something of a hopeful stab. Shaozu didn’t usually go after girls, which suited fine since they usually came to the Wolfbats in threes and it was easy for Tahno to pick up the spare. He usually didn’t go after anybody—mostly he was just too focused on pro bending to take notice.

“I’m not leaving the city,” Tahno said. He still had a few ideas, and he wasn’t quite ready to let go and move on like the others were.

Shaozu stood for a moment more before turning around, saying “All right,” and going to the kitchen to call his family to send movers to take his things back home to the White Falls Resort.

The movers came, dressed in the White Falls Resort uniforms, and they were quick and efficient in getting his things out. Shaozu said goodbye one last time, mentioning he’d stop by Ming’s place on the way out of town. Tahno merely nodded, and as soon as Shaozu was out the door he went to the phone book and began making a list of all the healers in the city that he knew of, adding to that the healers from the phone book.


	6. Stage 4 Derailed

“Hey Korra…” Tahno said when he noticed the Avatar standing to the side of his bench in the station.

“Tahno?” she said. She sounded surprised, and sat down on the other end of the bench, that comfortable distance from an enemy turned pariah. “Listen, I know we’re not exactly best friends, but I’m sorry Amon took your bending.” For the first time, the condolences of another felt good.

“I’ve been to the best healers in the city,” Tahno said, more to the air in front of him than to Korra. He needed to say it out loud, to tell someone. “Whatever Amon did to me… it’s permanent.” There. He’d admitted it. Done with denial, done with hope. But he did feel a stab of anger, and turned to Korra. “You gotta get him for me.”

Before she could reply, Chief of Police Beifong came out with the previous witness.

“Mr. Sato, if you remember anything else about what you saw during Amon’s attack, be sure to let us know.”

“I’m happy to help any way I can,” the man replied. “I want these Equalists to pay for what they’ve done!” He nodded to Tahno, and again he was not repulsed by the condolences of another.

Chief Beifong looked at him, and Tenzin said “We’re ready for you now.”

Tahno rose to follow them out of the lobby into the interview room. “See ya around, _Uh-_ vatar,” he said, managing a two-finger salute and a shadow of his smile for her. He couldn’t keep his shoulders or his head up as he walked away from that face, those eyes, that voice. For whatever reason, it was her face he pictured as he described Amon’s attack, what it felt like to lose half of who he was.

 

 

Tahno had lost count of all the healers he’d visited in the last twenty four hours. Clean, white clinics that smelled of alcohol and steam. More rustic rooms with urns of imported water and wizened old women murmuring words under their breath.

Tahno couldn’t remember anything but the sad way they shook their heads, telling him that there wasn’t anything they could do. As he left the station, he shoved his hands I his pockets and found an unfamiliar scrap of paper.

 _Talk to Dr. Hya Tien. She may be able to help you in a useful way_ , it read, and then gave an address and phone number.

Tahno didn’t have room left for hope, but the way it ended… _able to help him in a useful way_ … it was at least worth taking a look at, since it was on the way home. And despite just how much he hated the thought of being seen, being recognized in public, that big empty house of shadows and echoes terrified him.

He gave the address to the cab driver and sat numbly in the back of the cab. Once he was in the office, he didn’t remember paying the cabbie or climbing up the stairs, or even talking to the girl behind the desk about seeing the doctor. He was just in the seat, taking up space, until she offered him a cup of tea and told him the doctor would see him shortly. Soon, she opened the door and he walked alone down a narrow hall to a mahogany door with a name plate reading _Dr. Hya Tien_. He opened it.

“Mr. Tahno,” said the woman behind the desk. “Please have a seat.”

Tahno did as she asked, slumping into a lush leather chair in front of her desk.

“My associate from the New Shores Healers has been so good as to familiarize me with your case,” the doctor said. She had a face of indeterminate age and wore a pale green jacket with a high collar. “I’m afraid I wasn’t listening on the radio when it happened, so at the moment my firsthand knowledge of your situation is minimal.” She paused for a moment. “I won’t ask you to describe your situation just yet. Did Dr. Kansen from the healing clinic tell you what my specialty is?”

“No,” Tahno answered, and it came out more of a sigh than anything else.

“I specialize in grief counseling. Most often, I handle cases where loved ones have died and the surviving family member or friend is having trouble moving on from the trauma,” the doctor said. “A case such as yours… it is certainly the first I have handled, but I fear it will not be the last.”

Tahno didn’t notice himself snap to attention, fists clenched on the arms of the couch, or the harsh edge in his voice as he said “ ** _No._** ”

“All right then,” the doctor answered calmly without changing posture or expression. “The way I intend to approach this, Mr. Tahno, is like any other case of the death of someone a patient of mine was close to. In my doctorate thesis from Republic University, I proposed that grief comes in five stages, which I will describe for you so we can diagnose where you might be in the grieving process.”

Tahno said nothing, and she continued.

“The first stage is denial, where it is hard for the surviving member to grasp the concept that the death or trauma has occurred.” Tahno remembered Shaozu spending the day trying to firebend in the kitchen until he held Ming’s lighter in his hand.

“The second stage is anger, where the natural response is ‘How could this happen to me? Someone should pay for this. This is not fair.” Tahno remembered very clearly going through a period of rage like that, taking it out on anyone and anything he could.

“The third stage is bargaining, trying to do whatever one can to counteract the tragedy. This is typically where people begin making sacrifices to spirits, praying for their loved ones to be returned, praying for things to be redone and have them taken instead.” Tahno didn’t remember many details about his nonstop visits to the healers, but he could remember saying again and again _Anything for my bending, anything for my bending…_

“The fourth stage is depression. At this stage, the person realizes that nothing can be done for the tragedy…” She seemed like she wanted to say more, but didn’t.

“And then the final stage is acceptance, where the person moves on with his or her life without whatever has been lost.”

“…What?” Tahno said, feeling something in his chest which was not pathetic.

“Acceptance. To accept that you have lost something and cannot get it back—”

“ _What?_ You expect me to just _accept_ that Amon took my bending away, and just go on with my life _la di da?_ _Do you have **any** idea what he took away from me, woman?_ Not just my bending, my career, my _life!_ ”

“Yes, I know it can often feel like your life is over when tragedy strikes—”

“‘It can feel like’ my life is over? _Do you have any idea who I am?_ I am Tahno Hanshen, Captain of the White Falls Wolfbats, four time pro-bending champion. And I don’t need some lady in an office like you telling me to _just get on with it_.”

The anger was revitalizing, and Tahno turned his back on her to study his reflection in a shiny black plaque on the wall. He couldn’t do anything with the sleepless bags under his eyes, his lack of eyeliner, or his lank hair. But he could feel his spine was back to its limber strength and his shoulders were rolled back. He turned back to the lady and lifted his chin so he was looking down his nose at her with his typical grin.

“Thanks for the help, Dollface, you’re really worth the money I don’t intend to pay for your bull services,” he said, and walked out of the office. He stole a kiss from the secretary girl on his way out and left her with a “Thanks for the tea,” before heading back out on the city.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Finally found the information about what the other Wolfbats' names were, and changed the chapters accordingly. Apologies for the error.


End file.
